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| Safety hazard: Cracker stalls come up in residential area on Smadhian Road | | COURTESY: Jammu District Administration | |  Early Times Report
Jammu, Nov 8: Notwithstanding the government ban on setting up of fire cracker shops and stalls in the city’s residential and commercial areas, several of them have come up, a few yards off the Smadhian Road near Exhibition Ground here. Courtesy: Jammu District Administration.
The stalls have come up in an open land surrounded by a thickly populated locality, a power grid station and hotels. To walk into the land, one has to weave one’s way through the hordes of children streaming out of the locality. At any given time, these children can be seen playing in the close vicinity of the cracker stalls.
The setting up of the cracker stalls in the open land not only poses a threat to these playful children but are also hazardous for the scores of families, including Vaishnodevi pilgrims, who put up in the nearby hotels. A mishap can trigger panic among those staying in hotels and the local dwellers, leading to a melee
Locals are up in arms against the district administration for giving permission to cracker sellers to put up their stalls in the open land. They plan to hold an anti-district administration protest if the cracker stalls were not shifted to the city outskirts.
They said due to the heavy rush of cracker buyers to the area, they were even finding it difficult to walk through the lane to reach their houses. “By giving permission to set up cracker stalls here, the district administration has made an arrangement to cause us mental harassment and spoil our Diwali,” they asserted.
They urged the authorities concerned to take immediate steps for the shifting of cracker stalls to a less populated area on the city outskirts.
It may be mentioned that nearly three decades or so back, several fire cracker shops were burnt at Pacca Danga here, resulting in the death of some persons. After this horrifying incident, the government had put a blanket ban on the sale of fire crackers in residential and commercial areas of the state, stating that it “poses a serious threat to human lives”.
Quoting some inputs, sources in the district administration said the banned Chinese crackers too had clandestinely entered the Jammu market. Chinese crackers have been banned from being imported into India. Not only do they affect the Indian firecracker industry, but they are also termed as highly unsafe.
Sources said several fire cracker shops were also operating from certain densely populated areas of old Jammu city and dozens of unlicensed cracker shops had come up in some areas on the outskirts ahead of Diwali. “These shops do not have any safety arrangements,” the sources added.
The district administration was yet to carry out a checking of these illegal cracker shops, sources claimed.
On the presence of firecracker stalls in the residential area on Smadhian Road, sources said permission shouldn’t have been granted to them and they ought to have been offered space on the city outskirts.
Deputy Commissioner, Jammu, was not available for comments.
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